Essentially the world is protesting against YOU

Ok there are a few issues here:-

1)What are the credible solutions to the problems.
2)What is the agenda of these protesters.
3)What were the causes of the earlier problems

Answers
1) Well, forcing banks to be more accountable, transparent and responsible after receiving bail-out money is fine.
Providing incentives for banks to move derivs onto clearing-house systems potentially makes sense. ( It may be a way of preventing defaults)

A Tobin Tax on ALL financial transactions - including clearing house trasnactions? This is horrific, jawdropping nonsense. Its like curing poverty by firing nuclear missiles at it.

2)Their agenda? Well, these aren't quite the sweetness and light individuals u may believe them to be. Gates was nothing more than a corporate monopolist bully using America's might to force people into a product derived from better FREE products. He'd LOVE the idea of stopping others joining the billionaire ranks.
Soros isn't much different these days.

Look at the ones in London. Its trust fund toffs. Lazy buggers who cant be bothered to understand the system, because they get an income from Daddy, and they dont need to work.

3)The cause WASN'T the fact we have liquid and sophisticated financial markets. Putting our young graduates in crap jobs for the past 10-15 yrs hasn't helped the West. Exporting our jobs and capital to China hasn't helped the West. Costly invasions of the Middle East, has disgraced the West. In places like Britain we have the antithesis to Capitalism ie people being awarded top jobs because of who their father was friends with - croney Capitalism. Then we have political nonsense like the "one size fits all" Eurozone.

They say the Devil will appear as a mild man promising a cure to our ills.
Well it looks like he's appearing right now. He's blaming our ills what us lot do for a living. The truth is that corrupt Corporativism was ONE cause of our ills. And the bizarrely proposed solution is extreme Corporativism ie FASCISM.
Ooops thats just like China.. but maybe more so!!

I would trade the opportunity to be a mllionaire for a world without war where men and women can live in peace and harmony.

It's coming soon, but it won't last long when it does.

Time is of course, relative.

I agree. All these protest movements are in fact protesting against people like TRADERS, protesting that is, against people who are greedier than the rest.

But to my mind, these protesters are ingrates who are blind to their own good fortune. What they do not understand is that if they succeed and resurrect socialism, THEY THEMSELVES will be much worse off. Worse off even than they are now.

With capitalism, at least some people can get rich, while a great many can live comfortably. With equality and hence socialism, the individualistic instincts will be killed off, men will lose their appetite for material goods, there will be no more wealth being created and everyone will be reduced to poverty and slavery.

I find it difficult to understand how all these protest movements can protest against greed when only with a superabundance of greed will overall wealth increase. It may not be evenly distributed, but what is the alternative? Forced equality, which would guaranteed universal poverty.

There is no doubt in my mind that equality is just too contrary to human nature, and that a system which attempts to enforce it is doomed. Unless some people can be allowed to become magnificently rich, the end result will be magnificent poverty for all of humanity. That's what this particular strain of capitalism is all about: It's about encouraging people to conceive and develop an idea, become magnificently rich, and in so doing create jobs which will enable the rest of society to tag along and partake in some of the wealth being created. It is a system specifically designed to stimulate the maximum economic efficiency and growth, and specifically designed to exploit resources which have been abundant thus far.

Essentially, all these protest movements have their root in negative instincts: the instincts representing rest, sleep, inactivity, mediocrity, weakness and envy. In other words, the instincts of the chaotic rabble. Even if they succeed in deposing Wall Street from its throne atop the world, they will NOT succeed in undoing the natural human tendency towards inequality.

This is a common view of the rich... blame their having to give up something whether it be 20% or even 5% on resurrecting socialism when their share of the proverbial pie has out paced the middle class over the course of even only 10 years.

If your definition of capitalism is to pay CEO's and other top management ever increasing salaries and bonuses while freezing or lowering wages of the workers, downsizing and forcing working staff to take on more job duties... yeah that should work.

Hmm what is slavery? long hours with low pay, no benefits, owned. If you're not a CEO or owner, you are a modern day slave.

You have to live it to understand it. You have to open your eyes to it. Let's do a stroll down history lane.

Enron... super abundance of greed. Overall wealth increase? nope... nothing left. Everyone out of a job, lost retirement accts... all gone.

Lehman Bros. super abundance of greed. Overall wealth increase? nope...nothing left. Everyone out of a job, gone... gone and gone.

Bernie Madoff -- ah yes the poster boy of super abundance of greed. Overall wealth creation? where is it I would love to see it.

Alan Stanford --- another poster boy of super abundance of greed. Where is the wealth creation?

MF Global --- wow, where do I come up with these history examples of GREED. Where do they end?

Where oh where is the wealth creation? Greed is what causes poverty. If not please name one example of super abundance of greed that has paid off. I actually cut this short because there are also a list of banks 10 miles long that have failed as well due to this "greed" thing that you suggest creates all this wealth for everyone.

I don't know how you equate equality to fairness. Any wage earner or employee wants fairness. They realize a higher end job would pay more that's common sense.

You're not going to pay a CEO wage to a normal worker, but in your world or the world you are demonstrating by your post is that you think this is about equality.

I find it amusing that you never once talk about "FAIRNESS".

When you do something... whether it is pay the CEO $x amount and a worker $x amount you pay them what is right and FAIR for the work they do. But yet you can turn into any history channel and find out that CEO pay has ballooned far and above that of a normal worker and at an precedented rate.

That in essence is why you have Occupy Wall Street.

Perhaps I'm being too simplistic or too naive, but any protest by society is to help correct situations that if left to snowball will bring all of society down...the people protesting don't realise that all countries face three multiple problems...

1) tax evasion by all, from the super rich to the poor...this could be work paid cash in hand business, to tax exemptions to tax havens...so all that tax lost thru this inefficiency has to be corrected by removing physical cash from the monetary system (easily possible) to removing tax exemptions that favour the rich

2) inefficient government is inefficient in every department due to no accountability, remove punishment and there will be crime, most elected officials are in power for short term and come up with wasteful short term solutions, this is costing billions and trillions in wasted tax...which can only be maintained by maintaining or raising tax levels...

3) all social security programmes have ballooned beyond size and are unsustainable, it was designed to protect the poor and feeble and has removed survival of the fittest syndrome, we now have people who take advantage by not working or sponging off the system, and as we now live longer we are supporting people who are leaching off productive taxpayers

Even if a country sorts out these problems it's then competing against global problems of finite jobs, finite resources and rising population...we all need to forget our individual history and hatred and tackle these problems if we are to progress our society...all this rubbish about wealth creation is nonsense, individuals who amass billions are not pushing society forward, the individuals who will build the next space rocket, invent super efficient renewable resources and push our cultures forward, these people are wasted by being attracted to wealth creation in banking...when people no longer have to worry about money do they put their mind to something else...and what is money for? To buy food, clothes and luxury...banking doesn't create wealth, it steals wealth from others, a profit on a trade is someones loss elsewhere, each transaction is skimming off money created by other individuals...so first step off removing excessive pay to more realistic terms would maybe push our quantum physicists and biologists and super engineers into fields that may actually create jobs for others...it's only one small step in the grand scale of problems we all face till all the above problems are solved...it will never happen as we're all selfish human beings who have to be superior to one another

Think of the effects of wealth distribution...I work for a well known company whose owners have a personal wealth of 1 billion pounds, a fortune, thru their work they've created a successful business which offers consumers great deals but it's based on almost slave rates for it's employees, and in their need for more money they've reduced the number of professionals in the industry...now firstly what this does is a) devalue learning...what's the point in learning and expanding skill sets if the reward is non existent, this discourages motivation and ambition,b) it also means consumers will get a stressed out employee who will offer worse service...c) employees who are on slave rates then require extra funding thru social service to survive so that increases tax burden on society...

By limiting the amount of money an individual can amass, by limiting the levels of executive pay, the slave rates could increase by £5-10k, now 25,000 employees spending that money locally will be good for an economy, it can be taxed, it reduces social security dependence, and is far better than the money being stuck in an off shore tax haven

Some way has to be found to have a more equitable distribution of fiat currency.

Surely there are tasks society needs done that can put those who WANT to work, to work.

Only a fool would think protests, however mis-informed (or perhaps more accurately, mis-"guided"), would not be the result of current global under-employment. People do WANT to work on meaningful projects.

It's amazing most here KEEP MISSING THE POINT.

Government should be 100% people's wills and wishes.

Therefore YOU ARE the government.

So when 1% of the population runs the government then what's wrong with this picture?

You might as well install a king or queen ...

It is without question the world is at a fork in the road. I don't know which way things will go but I know this. It's pretty simple actually. Whoever was fucked before will be fucked after.

"Government" has been co-opted by private interests.

Kings and Queens were de-installed around World War 1.

Bottom line is we can all debate philosphy and our own version of utopia or eden or heaven...i suggest u make money via trading and then think about how u can improve things on a local level and maybe one day influence things on a national level...all talk achieves nothing...the harsh reality is people in power can be bought, threatened, eliminated and replaced...people have short term memory...history repeats itself again and again...we are no different from the countless peasants that have revolted throughout history, we revolt and achieve our goals, until we elect a leader or government who are doomed to repeat the same mistakes...how do u break this cycle?

Most of the people who go to these anti-capitalism protests are unemployed, meaning that we (the greedy taxpayers) are essentally paying for them to protest against us.

They are the liberal left and in the UK at least have completely changed life in Britain for the worse, one of them even made it to prime minister (Gordon Brown) but he didn't last long, unfortunately he did place one of the worst gold trades in history and almost bankrupted a whole country.

They want uncontrolled immigration, higher taxes for retired people, increases in welfare, special priveleges for religous minorities and human rights for all, especially terrorists and criminals. They really are a bunch of lost and confused people and because of their kind we (the UK) have some of the most non sensical laws in the western world.

The rest of the civilised world wants to send these losers on a one way ticket to hell, antarctica is free, I'd certainly lower my carbon foot print if it made it a little colder up there for them ;-)

Basically I have absolutely no sympathy for these people whatsoever, they are socialists and where-ever they go they create poverty for all, just look at the EU.

They certainly are not representing the 99% here in Britain.

We are all entitled to our opinions but that last post was plain retarded...this isn't about socialism, this isn't even about capitalism or communism, the global protests are about human greed...we have on one side individuals worth billions and on the other side you have people living below the poverty line...is the actions of any one individual enough to justify such a payscale? These banks and hedge funds don't create wealth or value, it's all transference...why should the taxpayers bail out banks who use the cash to top up their salary or pensions or bonus...those billions can be invested in other industries that can create jobs...I would be vary about suggesting the killing of free thinkers...even if they are misguided or against the majority...would u suggest killing the 8-15% unemployed in the UK? Or the 15 million people on social benefits or the million in jail...all cos ur lucky enough to have a job...the only reason you are not on the streets protesting is cos u can work, eat and keep warm...if your work decided they can't compete with the 50p an hour or 50p a day companies pay to people in Asia and Africa, and they lowered your wage to slave rates, then what? Would u be protesting? Maybe you haven't noticed recent attempts to remove basic labour laws like minimum wage or unfair dismissal...the question is when will you protest? I'd be very wary, the world is full of angry people and resentment, you start suggesting removing people and one day the mob will be at your door...if I was you I'd think about what would make you protest